GERMANS REPULSED EVERY TIME

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 87, 18 March 1916, Page 5

GERMANS REPULSED EVERY TIME

The Submarine Policy of the Huns

Latest Act Rouses Indignation

Blustering German Budget Speech

THE SHAMROCK AND LOYALTY

CURRENT WAR TOPIGS.

West o fthe Meuse the German efforts are reported to be slackening, while on the east side of the river at the now historic village of Yaux they have been repeatedly repulsed. As many as five determined assaults on the village and the fort of Vaux met with disaster, and they suffered heavy losses. The material and moral effect of this further proof that the Germans cannot break down the Allied defence here will be very great, and gives point to the remark of a certain French General the other clay when he said: "A load is off my mind, now I am certain of success." At Ypres and in the Woevre district there is nothing to report beyond the continuation of intermittent bombing and also, for certain, the usual trench warfare'with hand grenades and sapping." . ', ~.; .;,

The torpedoing of the Dutch liner Tubantia and ' the ' da'stardly attempt on tlie French steamer P'atria has again roused the : c\vili sec] world to the horrors of 'submarine (varfare as carried out' by the Hiins. There appears to have been a deliberate attempt' tci''sacrifice"hundreds of lives in both cases, and but for the pre-sence-'of niind arid skill of the captain of the Patria there'must have been very great loss ! pf life, as the passenger list contained as many as two thousand names. The position of America is growing more complicated everyday, as successive cases occur of her citizens being deliberately murdered on the high seas. The office of President for Woodrow Wilson can be no sinecure; in fact, it is being pointed out increasingly that the course he would roy"(() has not met with the apprp.vs or the great majority of his ' The month is not much more than half over, yet.it 13 quite evident that Germany's new submarine policy with regard to merchantmen is,being' carried'out to the letter. ,i„

Modern warfare has developed a very remarkable fact. One of tnj> most impressive things at the front is the absence of any sight of the enemy. This was referred to, it will be remembered, by Private C. S. Kelly, one time of the "Stratford Evening Post" staff, and his statement that he had not had the pleasure of seeing one Turk at which to shoot was made the subject of a paragraph in almost every paper in the Dominion. To the writer, Private Kelly explained that the only shots he fired were by command, say, for practice at a particular clump of trees where a stray Turk might be hiding, or, again, in the darkness to give the enemy the impression that an assault was pending. This is quite* the feasible view, of course, but without the explanation many people no doubt harbored in the back of their mind the idea that, war was not s#ch a dreadful thing after all. Now, Private Kelly's remarks havt since been borne out by hundreds of other returned soldiers, and the most recent corroboration comes to hand from no less an authority than Mr H. S. Gullett, the official Australian correspondent on the Western front, who, in his "yarn" to fellowjournalists at Sydney on the occasion of the welcome home the other day, said he had never seen a German in France except ' prisoners, and the majority of the soldiers fighting in France had never seen a German. Occasionally one saw a shovel full of earth being thrown out,.and on that •point the snipers were busy.

Mr Gullett supplied some very good stuff, much more interesting in fact than all the surmising that might be done from the refuge of an arm chair, and no apology is needed for its reproduction in this column. Further,' first-hand information on the subject of the war is always welcome. Mr Gullett said he believed that "the first battle of Ypres was the most significant event of the war, so far. It was there that the Allies sealed the western line, by baulking the German thrust for Calais and other ports, in November, 1914. A few weeks before the Germans might have had the Channel ports with the trouble of marching small forces into them, just a s they might have had Paris; but in their opinion the acquisition of a few additional towns more or less; and a little extra territory was of small importance, so long as 'the French armies remained intact in the open. It was not until the German's had failed in their boast of in* viucibility against France, and ' had been turned brick 'at the MarneV that: they recast their"'I plans,"•■>;iirich struck west for the sea. They were opposed at tores', by'suclr French'•trbops >s could be spared','and'by the old armies of the British expeditionary force; reinforced by the 7th Division, which was'made'up in part by regulars from the United' Kingdom and from regiments on' service abroad. That fight would be memorable a s the last in this war, if not for all time, fought by the 'old regular soldier, as the sole representative of Britain. Germany's opportunity had gone at Ypres. In spite of \ great and obvious disadvantages the German onset had been stopped. But when the German was on the defensive, when he had definitely adopted the roll of the defender of his fatherland, we must, expect him to display the v -m.e doggecj resistance- that we d, H i)lvyed. , : , , *'Make no, mistake about it," said Mr Gullett, "the Germans will "die very hard. Have no faith in short cuts to victory through the economic collapse of Germany or internal revolution. If we in Australia, or the people of the United Kingdom, were fighting against the world, and were offered the only terms of peace offered to, Germany—that is, terms of unconditional surrender—we would beat the leaves off the trees, and fight to the 1 last gap, before.we gave up the struggle. Germany is as pi'oud as we are, and more arrogant and ambitious, and she will die just as hard as we would."